My grandfather, Mershell C. Graham sitting on the porch railing of his unofficially adopted family’s home in Montgomery, Alabama in the early 1900s. Mary Graham seated in the rocker and her son John Clifton seated on the stairs.
Inspired by Angela Y. Walton-Raji over at My Ancestor’s Name, I finally did The Ancestor’s Geneameme.
It was started by Geniaus several days ago.
The list should be annotated in the following manner:
Things you have already done or found: bold face type
Things you would like to do or find: italicize (color optional)
Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type
You are encouraged to add extra comments in brackets after each item
Which of these apply to you?
The Ancestors’ Geneameme
1. Can name my 16 great-great-grandparents.
I can name 12.5. Robert ALLEN, Clara HOSKINS, John AVERITT, Elizabeth Marshall TUCKER, Frank CLEAGE, Judy CLEAGE, ? RICE (He’s the 1/2), Joseph JACKSON, PRISSA JACKSON, Joe TURNER, Emma JONES, Dock ALLEN, Eliza WILLIAMS.
2. Can name over 50 direct ancestors. [yes]
3. Have photographs or portraits of my 8 great-grandparents I have photos of two. Celia Rice Cleage Sherman and Jennie Virginia Allen Turner.
4. Have an ancestor who was married more than three times.
One had 4 different partners but was not married to all of them.
5. Have an ancestor who was a bigamist [No.]
6. Met all four of my grandparents [Yes. I grew up in the same city with them and saw them often. One died when I was 11. Two lived until I was in my twenties and One lived until I was 35.]
7. Met one or more of my great-grandparents [Met one, Jennie Virginia Allen Turner. The others died before I was born.]
8. Named a child after an ancestor [All of my children have a family name and an African name.]
9. Bare an ancestor’s given name/s [No but I do have my mother’s maiden name as a middle name, as do several cousins.]
10. Have an ancestor from Great Britain or Ireland [Yes]
11. Have an ancestor from Asia [Well, 23 & me says I do]
12. Have an ancestor from Continental Europe [Not that I’m aware of]
13. Have an ancestor from Africa [Yes]
14. Have an ancestor who was an agricultural laborer [Yes]
15. Have an ancestor who had large land holdings [Joe Turner owned a lot of land but I don’t know how much. Need to find those records.]
16. Have an ancestor who was a holy man – minister, priest, rabbi [My father was a minister. The Grandparents did start some churches.]
17. Have an ancestor who was a midwife [No. I used to want to be a midwife though.]
18. Have an ancestor who was an author [My father and now my sister]
19. Have an ancestor with the surname Smith, Murphy or Jones [Emma Jones Turner]
20. Have an ancestor with the surname Wong, Kim, Suzuki or Ng [No]
21. Have an ancestor with a surname beginning with X [No]
22. Have an ancestor with a forename beginning with Z [No]
23. Have an ancestor born on 25th December [My grandfather Mershell C. Graham did not know the day he was born and picked December 25.]
24. Have an ancestor born on New Year’s Day [Nobody in my tree was born January 1.]
25. Have blue blood in your family lines [No royalty]
26. Have a parent who was born in a country different from my country of birth [No]
27. Have a grandparent who was born in a country different from my country of birth[No]
28. Can trace a direct family line back to the eighteenth century [Yes]
29. Can trace a direct family line back to the seventeenth century or earlier [No]
30. Have seen copies of the signatures of some of my great-grandparents [yes]
31. Have ancestors who signed their marriage certificate with an X [Yes]
32. Have a grandparent or earlier ancestor who went to university [Yes Grandfather Albert B. Cleage Sr. & Great Grandfather Buford Averitt, both finished Medical School.
33. Have an ancestor who was convicted of a criminal offense [Great Grandfather Lewis Cleage spent time in jail for various minor offenses. Other non-direct ancestors spent time in prison.]
34. Have an ancestor who was a victim of crime [Great grandmother Jennie Allen Turner land was stolen after her husband died. Not to mention those held in slavery for generations.]
35. Have shared an ancestor’s story online or in a magazine [On my blogs I share them all the time. More to come.]
36. Have published a family history online or in print [The blogs are sort of a serial history but I hope to do a more organized one, perhaps next year I will start]
37. Have visited an ancestor’s home from the 19th or earlier centuries [No, but if any are still standing would love to.]
38. Still have an ancestor’s home from the 19th or earlier centuries in the family [No]
39. Have a family bible from the 19th Century [Not a family Bible but I have a pocket New Testament that came to my grandfather, Mershell Graham through his brother Jacob who got it from his doctor who was gifted it by relatives in 1875.]
40. Have a pre-19th century family bible [No]
The dollhouse Poppy, my grandfather made me in the 1950s when I was 9 years old was the envy of my sister and cousins in it’s prime. A few days ago I read on The Magpies Nest about her project to fix up her daughter’s old doll house and it inspired me to do the same with mine. I asked my husband to dig it out of the long, narrow closet where it has been for the past 4 years. Poor house! It went through my childhood and then my children’s childhoods and being stored for years and years and it is much the worse for wear. Right now the poor dollhouse looks like one of those falling-to-pieces houses. Houses with a grand past that have been divided into rooming houses or just left to rot.
I have started my rehab by tearing off the contact paper wallpaper and removing the third story where the wood was rotting and scrubbing the whole thing down. I want to keep the gist of the house but make some changes I’ve always wanted to make, like adding stairs and returning it to the two-sided access dollhouse it used to be. I will post more photos as the work progresses.
There is a box of furnishings that I haven’t had the heart to look at yet. I doubt if any of my original furnishings have survived this long but I hope there are some good pieces in there.
Other posts on the dollhouse
Dollhouse update – hardwood floor
Dollhouse update – Floor finished, Roof On
The staff at Annis Furs in Downtown Detroit. Taken in the 1920’s. My great grandmother, Jennie Virginia Allen Turner is in the second row, far left. Her daughter Alice is next to her. Skip the next woman and her daughter Daisy is there, 4th from the left. The three of them got jobs at Annis Furs soon after moving to Detroit from Montgomery, Alabama in 1922. I remember a little teddy bear Daisy made for my younger cousin Marilyn Elkins out of scraps of real fur. To read more about my Great Grandmother Turner, click Jennie Virginia Allen Turner.
Above is a photograph from the Burton collection at the Detroit Public Library. The Annis Fur Company is in the corner building. Although this was taken in 1917 I think the area looked pretty much the same 7 years later. To see a photograph of the Woodward Ave in 1910 click at Shorpy. You can see Annis Fur Post and Grinell Bros Pianos on the left, looking down the crowded street, past the Eureka Vacuum sign.
For more photos of crowds of women and other fascinating subjects, click Sepia Saturday.
My grandfather, Albert B. Cleage Sr is 5th from the left, top row. Dr. Ames, who I talked about here Births, Deaths,Doctors and Detroit – Part 2- The Doctors & Detroit in the 1920s is 7th from the left in the 3rd row down.
Gamma Lamda Chapter
Several months ago 23andme was running a special for African Americans, in order to broaden their genetic base. The price was right (free) so I signed up and received my spit test kit in a timely fashion. I sent it back, curious about what my percentages of DNA from the various continents would be. After a wait of 5 or 6 weeks I was informed that my results were posted. There they are above. None of this was surprising to me. Looking at myself and my relatives I knew there was some European DNA in there. My father’s sister and I had done an Mtdna test awhile ago and both my maternal and paternal grandmother’s lines back to West Africa. The small amount of DNA from Asia, I learned from the 23andme website, could be Native American DNA or it could be from the Asian DNA found in some African’s DNA. They (23andme) cannot predict Native American DNA in African Americans yet because usually it is (they said) mixed with a small amount of European DNA and then there is that African/Asian DNA thing.
Now, as I said, none of this surprised me. And it also didn’t change the way I feel about myself or my ancestry. I know the European DNA is there but the men that “donated” it didn’t leave a story, a whisper or a name on a death certificate as a clue to who they were and where they came from. There is one exception, post slavery, that we have used reasonable clues to pinpoint – including family stories, naming patterns and geography. So, aside from the physical evidence/residue/DNA, they are invisible and likely to remain so, in spite of the “cousins” I find listed in my account.
I had not even thought about finding long lost cousins from the past. The first message I received turned out to be from an old family friend in Detroit. That was amazing and kind of funny. She and her husband were friends of my father’s family for decades and to get a message from her daughter saying we are possible 5th cousins was nice. We don’t know which side of the family we are related through, and I don’t see how we can ever trace it, but it’s nice anyway. I would like to hear from that possible 2nd cousin who hasn’t contacted me yet. That seems close enough to figure out how we’re connected. Maybe I already know them. If only it would be one of Uncle Hugh Reed’s long lost grandchildren. Or maybe my grandfather Mershell Graham’s brother’s or sister’s descendants.
My feeling is that the only way I’m going to find out where the last ancestor’s I’ve found came from, who their parents are, is to find the plantations they were on and look for the records. I don’t think I’ll find out anything shockingly new about those lines from 23andme. My husband received his kit yesterday. Can’t wait to see his percentages.
Today I have posted a page from a small photo album that featured a page for each member of my father’s family, plus some family friends. The contact size photos were not very carefully pasted in and are not identified or dated. Judging by the ages of the people, I think they were taken about 1938. Which makes my father, Albert B. Cleage Jr (Also known as “Toddy” to family and friends), 27. The theme this week is a man sleeping while posing for a photograph.
To see another page from the album, click Grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage
To see Sleeping (and other) Sepia Saturday offerings, click HERE.
My friend, historian Paul Lee, put this short clip of an interview of my father, Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr. by Chet Huntley on You Tube. It is from late 1967 or early 1968, not long after the 1967 Detroit riot.
For a post about my experience of the Detroit riot click HERE.
For an audio of my father’s sermon the Sunday after the riot click HERE.
As I was transcribing my grandmother Fannie Turner Graham’s records of her children’s births and deaths, I began to wonder about the lives of Dr. Ames and Dr. Turner (no relation) who attended these events. As I read about their lives in various online sources I also learned about Detroit race relations, some of which I knew but I had not put them together with the lives of my family and those they knew. I also realized some tie-ins with my paternal Cleage side of the family. They all get mixed up in this post.
On April 3, 1920 Mary V(irginia) Graham was born at home with Dr. Ames attending. My mother, Doris Graham Cleage did not remember him fondly. “It was a very difficult delivery, labor was several days long. The doctor, whose name was Ames, was a big time black society doctor, who poured too much ether on the gauze over Mother’s face when the time for delivery came. Mother’s face was so badly burned that everyone, including the doctor, thought she would be terribly scared over at least half of it. But she worked with it and prayed over it and all traces of it went away. Mary V’s foot was turned inward. I don’t know if this was the fault of the doctor or not, but she wore a brace for years.”
Dr. James Ames came to Detroit in 1894 after graduating from Straight University in New Orleans and Howard University Medical School in Washington D.C. He was elected to the Michigan State House of Representatives from Wayne County’s 1st district for a two year term, 1901-1902.
In 1900 the total population of Detroit was about 285,704. When my paternal grandparents, Albert B. and Pearl Cleage, moved their family to Detroit in 1915 the black population was about 7,000. By the time my maternal grandfather, Mershell C. Graham, arrived in 1917 the black population had soared to over 30,000.
Black doctors were routinely denied admitting privileges at white hospitals. This meant their patients had to be admitted to the hospital by a white doctor. They were sometimes also denied the right to treat their patients once they were admitted. Often hospitals had segregated wards and once they were full, black patients had to find another hospital. In 1918, 30 black doctors came together and founded Dunbar Hospital. Dr. Ames was Medical Director and Dr. Alexander Turner was Chief of Surgery. My grandfather Dr. Albert B. Cleage was one of the doctors. Dr. Ames is first row second from left in the photo of the Dunbar staff above. My grandfather is first row, last one to the far right.
Fannie Graham’s second child, Mershell C. Graham Jr, was born June 10, 1921 at Dunbar Hospital with Dr. Turner in attendance. In that same year, membership in the Ku Klux Klan in Detroit totaled 3,000. The third child, my mother, Doris J. Graham, was born February 12, 1923 at Women’s Hospital with Dr. Turner attending. By that time membership in the KKK in Detroit was 22,000. In November of that year between 25,000 and 50,000 Klan members attended a rally in Dearborn township, which is contiguous with Detroit’s west side.
By 1925 Detroit’s total population was growing faster than any other Metropolitan area in the United States, the black population was over 82,000. Housing segregation was widespread, although there were neighborhoods such as the East Side neighborhood where the Grahams lived that black and white lived together without friction. Perhaps the area wasn’t posh enough to invite trouble. Maybe the large number of immigrants accounts for it. Unfortunately that was not the story citywide as people began to try and move out of the designated black areas into the other neighborhoods. Families moving into homes they had purchased were met by violent mobs that numbered from the hundreds into the thousands. This happened in 1925 during April, June, twice in July and in September.
While writing this I realized that in 1925, my father, Albert B. Cleage Junior, was 14 and attending Northwestern High school with the children of the families that forced Dr. Turner out of his home. The elementary schools for both communities fed into Northwestern High School, which my father and his siblings attended. No wonder my grandmother Pearl Cleage is famous for going up to the school and fighting segregated seating and other inequalities practiced at the time. Ironically, in the ’60s when my sister and I were living on Oregon Street, several blocks from where Dr. Turner tried to move in, and attending Northwestern High School, the community was 99 percent black.
On November 1, 1927 Mershell C. Graham Jr was killed when he was hit by a truck on the way back to school after lunch. He was taken to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, a Catholic Hospital on Detroit’s East side. Dr. Turner was there with him when he died.
On September 9, 1928 Howard Alexander Graham was born at Woman’s Hospital with Dr. Alexander Turner attending. By 1930 Detroit’s population was 1,568,662. On March 4, 1932, Howard Graham died. I know that his first name was that of Fannie’s father. I wonder if his middle name, Alexander was for Dr. Alexander Turner.
Some links you might find interesting:
Part 1 – Births, Deaths, Doctors and Detroit – Grandmother Fannie’s Notes
The Sweet Trials: An Account
Click For other Sepia Saturday Posts